The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(6)

By then Tani’s struggles had stilled. And after that, she was gone, with her belly cut open like a pig’s, and old Salvatore holding his daughter’s limp shoulders, and blood all over the squat.

“That’s enough, Mahlia,” the doctor said, and Mahlia straightened from trying to rescue-breathe for the poor dead girl.

Salvatore was looking at them, accusation in his eyes. “You killed her.”

“No one killed her,” Doctor Mahfouz said. “Birth is always uncertain.”

“That one. That one killed her.” Salvatore pointed at Mahlia. “You should never have let her anywhere near my girl.”

At the man’s accusation, Mahlia palmed a bloody scalpel into her good hand, but didn’t show anything on her face as she turned to face him. If Salvatore made a move, she’d be ready.

“Mahlia…” The doctor’s voice held warning. He always knew what she was thinking. But Mahlia didn’t put down the scalpel. Better safe than sorry.

“Castoffs like her are bad luck. Got the Fates Eye on them,” Salvatore ranted. “We should have run her off when we had the chance.”

“Mr. Salvatore, please.” Doctor Mahfouz was trying to get the man to calm down. Mahlia didn’t think it would work. The man’s daughter was dead on the table with her belly cut wide and there Mahlia was, standing right in front of him, the perfect target for blame.

“Bad luck and death,” he said. “You were a fool to take that one in, Doctor.”

“Please, Salvatore. Even Saint Olmos calls for charity.”

“She kills things,” Salvatore said. “Everywhere she goes. Nothing but blood and death.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“She put the Fates Eye on Alejandro’s goats,” Salvatore pointed out.

“I didn’t touch them,” Mahlia retorted. “Coywolv got them, and everyone knows it. I didn’t touch them.”

“Alejandro saw you looking at them.”

“I’m looking at you,” Mahlia said. “That mean you’re dead, too?”

“Mahlia!”

She flinched at the doctor’s shocked remonstration. “I didn’t do nothing to your girl,” Mahlia said. “Or any goats.” She looked at the grieving father. “I’m sorry about your girl. Wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

She began picking up the stained medical implements while the doctor kept trying to soothe Salvatore. Mahfouz was good at that. He knew how to talk people down. In all her life, Mahlia had never seen someone who was so good at making people stop bickering, sit down, talk, and listen.

Doctor Mahfouz was gentle and calm in an argument, where most people went off and started shouting. He brought out the good. If it hadn’t been for him, Banyan Town would have run her off long ago. They might have let Mouse stay, even though he was a war maggot, too. But a castoff like her? No way. Not without the doctor talking words like charity and kindness and compassion.

Doctor Mahfouz liked to say that everyone wanted to be good. They just sometimes needed help finding their way to it. That was when he’d first taken her and Mouse in. He’d said it even as he was sprinkling sulfa powder over Mahlia’s bloody stump of a hand, like he couldn’t see what was happening right in front of him. The Drowned Cities were busy tearing themselves apart once again, but here the doctor was, still talking about how people wanted to be kind and good.

Mahlia and Mouse had just looked at each other, and didn’t say anything. If the doctor was fool enough to let them stay, he could babble whatever crazy talk he wanted.

Doctor Mahfouz gathered up Tani’s baby and poured it into the grieving grandfather’s arms.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Salvatore demanded. “I’m no woman. How will I feed it?”

“ ‘It’ is a ‘him,’ ” the doctor said. “Name him. Give your grandson a name. We’ll help you with the rest. You are not alone. None of us are alone.”

“Easy for you to say.” Salvatore’s gaze went to Mahlia again. “If she had two hands, you could have saved her.”

“Nothing could have saved Tani. We might wish otherwise, but the truth is that sometimes we are powerless.”

“I thought you knew all the peacekeeper medicine.”

“Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things. This is hardly a hospital. We make do with what we have, and none of that is Mahlia’s fault. Tani is the victim of many evils, but Mahlia is not the beginning of that chain, nor the end. I am responsible, if anyone is.”

“If your nurse had two hands, it would’ve helped,” Salvatore insisted.

Mahlia could feel the man’s gaze on her back as she dropped the last of the clamps and scalpels into Mahfouz’s bag. She’d have to boil everything when she got back to Mahfouz’s squat, but at least she could get out of here.

She snapped the bag closed, using the stump of her right hand to stabilize it while she worked the clasps with the fingers of her lucky left.

The bag’s leather was stamped with the Chinese characters of the peacekeeper hospital where Doctor Mahfouz had trained before the war started up again. . was an Accelerated Age word for the Drowned Cities. was for China. And she could pick out other characters as well: friendship and surgery, the character for courtyard.